Where are you, Jessica?
creative nonfiction by Donna Walker
Through the background noise of a commercial kitchen, I heard that a vampire had begun attending late night Sunday services at our Southern Baptist church. Supposedly the vampire was tall and wore black, complete with pointed vampire fangs. People seem to hold a macabre fascination with anyone who appears outside of the norm. I was managing my church’s kitchen, cooking and cleaning up for one hundred and eighty people every Wednesday night. Plus, my own life was a shit storm and I was depressed.
My husband, a physician, taught Sunday school at nine-thirty every Sunday morning for a diverse group of people. We split the duties of leadership. He handled the teaching while I concentrated on building relationships.
About a month after the vampire rumors continued to circulate, Jessica walked into our classroom and stood just inside the doorway, a purse looped over her shoulder, her brown leather Bible tucked under one arm. You couldn’t help but notice her. She stood at 6’ 2’’ in heels and wore a soft flowered pink dress with a low-cut sweetheart neckline. The top of her breasts spilled above the dress’ neckline and my first thought was, God, she has great tits. Waves of chestnut hair covered half of her face like a curtain, and blonde highlights flashed from the overhead fluorescent light like a prism whenever she moved her head. She wore a pink bow over her left ear. Yet, the tilt of her head and the color of her lipstick, a splash of red, signaled defiance. I’ve seen that look before.
I walked over to her, pasted on a smile, and said something like, “Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Come on in,” and motioned for her to come sit next to me at the long table where we studied. We talked and she told me her name was Jessica and through our conversation I discovered she spoke Russian and loved to cook. She was very pretty, much like Caitlin Jenner except for the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in her throat whenever she spoke or sipped coffee. At some point someone, I don’t know who, slipped a folded note under my elbow. I’m sure Jessica saw it but was much too polite to mention its existence. When my husband rose out of his chair and stepped over to greet her, I surreptitiously opened it under the table and it read, it’s the vampire from Sunday nights but without the fangs and it’s a man wearing a dress! I don’t consider myself a very good Christian, and I didn’t give a fuck whether Jessica was a vampire much less a man or a woman, but she sure as hell wasn’t an it. I knew that I would need to quickly stop this judgmental bullshit although I was functioning on low emotional reserves then. My youngest son was living three hundred miles away in Georgia and I missed him.
Every Sunday morning we entered a battle zone for just under a year. Jessica would open her Bible to Romans using a long fingernail colored black to pink. The members of our class split into two factions. One thought she was an abomination, living in satanic darkness (she continued to attend the late night service wearing her fangs, dressed in black) and they wanted her out of our classroom and out of our church. Some of the men found her low necklines a constant disguising distraction and one man even spat out hateful words, “If she walks into the woman’s bathroom, I’m going to beat the shit out of her.” My gut told me that he found her attractive, for why else would he violently oppose her presence? He told my husband he hated having to look at her breasts across the table from him every week. I suppose it must be extremely uncomfortable for a heterosexual Christian man to realize he’s attracted to someone who appears to be a man dressed as a woman.
I was honest with Jessica and told her that I didn’t care but some people in our class found the low cut dresses distracting. She looked so sad as she said, “I just want to look pretty.”
“You always looked pretty to me,” I said. “Would it be okay with you if I bought you a pink silk scarf for next week? I know your style now and I can pick out the perfect one.” I’ve reexamined the question I posed to her numerous times, and although Jessica loved the scarf I bought her and immediately wrapped it around her shoulders and neck the following Sunday, I wonder if I would have intervened if it had been any other woman than her. I liked her so much as a person and I felt vehemently that she should have the freedom to attend church, to seek God, to flourish amidst people who held the same religious beliefs as her. Half of our class sided with my husband and myself, proclaiming that the church is a haven for anyone who walks in the door seeking God—a no-judgment zone. Our only requirement: show love.
Jessica bore the brunt of incessant harassment without complaint or explanation for the first four months. Church leaders approached her and offered counseling to help her through any difficulties she was experiencing. Each week our friendship grew until finally after a Sunday afternoon lunch, after a lull in the conversation, she told me that she had been in counseling for years. Then she told me her story.
Jessica’s birthday was on November the 13th, the same day as mine, but she was one year younger. She was forty-nine to my fifty. In 1959, a time before DNA analysis emerged as a necessary tool in a doctor’s hospital bag, she told me of how she was born with ambiguous genitalia and the hospital pediatricians pressed her parents to choose her sex. I didn’t need to ask for details. I had worked for five years in a Pediatric unit in New Orleans and I feel as if I witnessed every genetic mutation possible. From what Jessica described to me, she had the physical traits of both male and female. Her parents were informed that they would need to choose whether she should be raised as a male or female, but it would be medically easier to manage if they choose the male sex. She told me her mother always wanted a son, so she was released from the hospital as a boy. Twelve years passed with toy trucks, baseball, and dress pants. But, when she reached adolescence doctors recommended that she be started on hormonal therapy, and at thirteen surgeons removed her uterus and ovaries. My heart dropped as she related her journey. I thought of my son in Georgia, coming to terms with his drug use. I couldn’t imagine my life without him and my other children. I just couldn’t bring myself to ask her if she had ever wished to be a mother. After a moment of silence she said, “I’ve always felt as if I lived in the wrong body.” Her story then skipped twenty years forward when she decided to have her DNA tested and the results proved that she was genetically a female.
Although I never understood the vampire persona, I think I do understand her quest to be true to the body God gave her. I asked her why she didn’t explain to everyone at church the reasoning behind her decision to undergo the transgender process, but she adamantly stated it was none of their business. I asked her if I could tell my husband. Since she trusted him and he was a doctor who abided under an oath of confidentiality, she agreed.
“That explains it,” he said after we sat on the couch later that afternoon. He told me how often genetic variances occur in the general population. Members of our current society have immediate access to DNA testing when children like Jessica are born and parents no longer carry the burden of a child’s sexual orientation.
Jessica stubbornly refused to leave our class until the church’s societal pressures grew too great. The last day I saw her, she stood in the doorway of our Sunday school classroom dissociated and distressed, finally wearing her vampire fangs on a Sunday morning. I approached her and asked, “Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” I don’t remember if she even gave me an answer; she pulled her red, red lips back in a grimace and bared bloody fangs at me. I said in a small voice, “Jessica, you’re frightening me.” She quickly left. I never saw her again, and I feel guilty, as if my verbal expression of fear was the final act that allowed our church leaders to drive her away.
After she left, I would wake up startled in the night and wonder, “Where are you Jessica?” I didn’t care whether she was male or female; she was my friend. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see her eyes reflecting out of mine. So wounded. And I wonder, did she know I loved her? It’s funny how convergences in one’s universe can go unnoticed. We were two companionable, disparate women, Jessica and I, standing at the edge of our own personal black holes.
Note: The name “Jessica” is a pseudonym to ensure her privacy.
My husband, a physician, taught Sunday school at nine-thirty every Sunday morning for a diverse group of people. We split the duties of leadership. He handled the teaching while I concentrated on building relationships.
About a month after the vampire rumors continued to circulate, Jessica walked into our classroom and stood just inside the doorway, a purse looped over her shoulder, her brown leather Bible tucked under one arm. You couldn’t help but notice her. She stood at 6’ 2’’ in heels and wore a soft flowered pink dress with a low-cut sweetheart neckline. The top of her breasts spilled above the dress’ neckline and my first thought was, God, she has great tits. Waves of chestnut hair covered half of her face like a curtain, and blonde highlights flashed from the overhead fluorescent light like a prism whenever she moved her head. She wore a pink bow over her left ear. Yet, the tilt of her head and the color of her lipstick, a splash of red, signaled defiance. I’ve seen that look before.
I walked over to her, pasted on a smile, and said something like, “Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Come on in,” and motioned for her to come sit next to me at the long table where we studied. We talked and she told me her name was Jessica and through our conversation I discovered she spoke Russian and loved to cook. She was very pretty, much like Caitlin Jenner except for the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in her throat whenever she spoke or sipped coffee. At some point someone, I don’t know who, slipped a folded note under my elbow. I’m sure Jessica saw it but was much too polite to mention its existence. When my husband rose out of his chair and stepped over to greet her, I surreptitiously opened it under the table and it read, it’s the vampire from Sunday nights but without the fangs and it’s a man wearing a dress! I don’t consider myself a very good Christian, and I didn’t give a fuck whether Jessica was a vampire much less a man or a woman, but she sure as hell wasn’t an it. I knew that I would need to quickly stop this judgmental bullshit although I was functioning on low emotional reserves then. My youngest son was living three hundred miles away in Georgia and I missed him.
Every Sunday morning we entered a battle zone for just under a year. Jessica would open her Bible to Romans using a long fingernail colored black to pink. The members of our class split into two factions. One thought she was an abomination, living in satanic darkness (she continued to attend the late night service wearing her fangs, dressed in black) and they wanted her out of our classroom and out of our church. Some of the men found her low necklines a constant disguising distraction and one man even spat out hateful words, “If she walks into the woman’s bathroom, I’m going to beat the shit out of her.” My gut told me that he found her attractive, for why else would he violently oppose her presence? He told my husband he hated having to look at her breasts across the table from him every week. I suppose it must be extremely uncomfortable for a heterosexual Christian man to realize he’s attracted to someone who appears to be a man dressed as a woman.
I was honest with Jessica and told her that I didn’t care but some people in our class found the low cut dresses distracting. She looked so sad as she said, “I just want to look pretty.”
“You always looked pretty to me,” I said. “Would it be okay with you if I bought you a pink silk scarf for next week? I know your style now and I can pick out the perfect one.” I’ve reexamined the question I posed to her numerous times, and although Jessica loved the scarf I bought her and immediately wrapped it around her shoulders and neck the following Sunday, I wonder if I would have intervened if it had been any other woman than her. I liked her so much as a person and I felt vehemently that she should have the freedom to attend church, to seek God, to flourish amidst people who held the same religious beliefs as her. Half of our class sided with my husband and myself, proclaiming that the church is a haven for anyone who walks in the door seeking God—a no-judgment zone. Our only requirement: show love.
Jessica bore the brunt of incessant harassment without complaint or explanation for the first four months. Church leaders approached her and offered counseling to help her through any difficulties she was experiencing. Each week our friendship grew until finally after a Sunday afternoon lunch, after a lull in the conversation, she told me that she had been in counseling for years. Then she told me her story.
Jessica’s birthday was on November the 13th, the same day as mine, but she was one year younger. She was forty-nine to my fifty. In 1959, a time before DNA analysis emerged as a necessary tool in a doctor’s hospital bag, she told me of how she was born with ambiguous genitalia and the hospital pediatricians pressed her parents to choose her sex. I didn’t need to ask for details. I had worked for five years in a Pediatric unit in New Orleans and I feel as if I witnessed every genetic mutation possible. From what Jessica described to me, she had the physical traits of both male and female. Her parents were informed that they would need to choose whether she should be raised as a male or female, but it would be medically easier to manage if they choose the male sex. She told me her mother always wanted a son, so she was released from the hospital as a boy. Twelve years passed with toy trucks, baseball, and dress pants. But, when she reached adolescence doctors recommended that she be started on hormonal therapy, and at thirteen surgeons removed her uterus and ovaries. My heart dropped as she related her journey. I thought of my son in Georgia, coming to terms with his drug use. I couldn’t imagine my life without him and my other children. I just couldn’t bring myself to ask her if she had ever wished to be a mother. After a moment of silence she said, “I’ve always felt as if I lived in the wrong body.” Her story then skipped twenty years forward when she decided to have her DNA tested and the results proved that she was genetically a female.
Although I never understood the vampire persona, I think I do understand her quest to be true to the body God gave her. I asked her why she didn’t explain to everyone at church the reasoning behind her decision to undergo the transgender process, but she adamantly stated it was none of their business. I asked her if I could tell my husband. Since she trusted him and he was a doctor who abided under an oath of confidentiality, she agreed.
“That explains it,” he said after we sat on the couch later that afternoon. He told me how often genetic variances occur in the general population. Members of our current society have immediate access to DNA testing when children like Jessica are born and parents no longer carry the burden of a child’s sexual orientation.
Jessica stubbornly refused to leave our class until the church’s societal pressures grew too great. The last day I saw her, she stood in the doorway of our Sunday school classroom dissociated and distressed, finally wearing her vampire fangs on a Sunday morning. I approached her and asked, “Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” I don’t remember if she even gave me an answer; she pulled her red, red lips back in a grimace and bared bloody fangs at me. I said in a small voice, “Jessica, you’re frightening me.” She quickly left. I never saw her again, and I feel guilty, as if my verbal expression of fear was the final act that allowed our church leaders to drive her away.
After she left, I would wake up startled in the night and wonder, “Where are you Jessica?” I didn’t care whether she was male or female; she was my friend. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see her eyes reflecting out of mine. So wounded. And I wonder, did she know I loved her? It’s funny how convergences in one’s universe can go unnoticed. We were two companionable, disparate women, Jessica and I, standing at the edge of our own personal black holes.
Note: The name “Jessica” is a pseudonym to ensure her privacy.
About the writer